Last minute plea for ‘Climate Change Refugee’

He was arrested by police and immigration officials at his West Auckland home on Tuesday morning for overstaying his permit.

Immigration New Zealand confirmed today Ioane Teitiota would be deported to Kiribati after a four-year legal battle.

Teitiota’s lawyer Michael Kidd said he supported the government’s recent decision to welcome more Syrian refugees but it was ignoring those left stranded in its own backyard.

The family is now taking their case to court.

New Zealand will tomorrow deport a Kiribati man who has argued he should be allowed to stay in the country as a refugee due to climate change threatening his homeland.

Kidd said Teitiota and his family feared returning to the Pacific Island nation, which was threatened by the effects of global warming.

“There is no employment opportunities in Kiribati, there is population density in Kiribati, there are no education opportunities for the children”.

She said seats had also been booked on the same flight for his wife and for their three children who were all born in New Zealand since the couple arrived on short-term work visas in 2007. “That of course is something beyond this court’s power and jurisdiction”, he said.

Mr Key said there were a number of over-stayers in New Zealand from Kiribati and Tuvalu.

“We have a set of rules that say, you have to stick to those rules because basically the wheels fall off because everyone goes around the system”, he said. “But to claim he is a refugee I think is just not correct”.

Members of his community in Auckland, which has one of the world’s biggest Pacific Islander populations, presented a petition to parliament asking for a reprieve for the family.

Green Party co-leader James Shaw said the case was the “canary in the mine”, and there would soon be “a flood of people from the Pacific Islands” because of climate change.

Teitiota and his wife came to New Zealand in 2007 and remained after their permits expired in October 2010.

Breakfast host Rawdon weighs into the issue of the deportation of “climate change refugee” Ioane Teitiota.

The case underlined a need for Government policy to address the issues associated with climate change.